NYC Designer Presents Wearables and Fashion Collection that Features 3D Printed Faces

The fashion industry has been a big proponent of using 3D printing technology to design and manufacture clothing for several years now, as it allows for the use of new and complex design paths that we’ve never seen before. Adoption of 3D printing has been on the rise in the fashion world, and we’ve seen everything from 3D printed shoes, coats, and dresses to maternity wear, watches, and even umbrellas hit the runway. The latest name you should watch out for in the 3D printed fashion world is Snezhana Paderina, a New York City-based fashion and wearable technology designer who recently presented a unique fashion collection, heavy on 3D printing, at the Designow fashion show in New York and at Harvard University’s Identities Fashion Show.

Paderina told 3DPrint.com, “The interesting thing about this collection is an unusual use of 3D printing in fashion design.”

Her cyberpunk “Intimate Decipherment” collection is made up of wearable and high fashion tech pieces, including bags, menswear, and womenswear that were designed through 3D printing technology and art.

“As you can see, 3D printed faces (which I sculpted in ZBrush) are ‘coming out’ of the garments which is pretty unique way to implement it into a garment,” Paderina told 3DPrint.com.

The innovative designer has a background in Information Technology, which helped propel her style towards a combination of traditional fabrication techniques and modern technology, mixing avant-garde with ready-to-wear clothing. She left her cyber security career in 2012 to open her own fashion design company, SNEZHANA.NYC, where she is the creative director. She also enrolled in the Parsons School of Design in NYC, to make sure that she would be able to meet, and surpass, her customers’ desires.

Because she has such an advanced knowledge of cutting-edge technology, Paderina is able to integrate 3D printed materials into the structure of her garments. While she’s used the technology in designs for other pieces, her latest collection especially features 3D printing, along with some architectural elements.

In addition to 3D printing, the collection uses several different materials and multiple other techniques, including machine embroidery, silicone casting, 3D modeling, and 3D rendering for digital fabric printing. The collection’s story, supported by digitally printed and silicone-covered 3D renderings and machine embroidery, features Paderina’s muse, a 3D modeled chrome creature “that exists in-between the real world and the virtual world.”

In the collection’s first look, her muse changes from a digital creation to a printed form, and by the end has transformed completely to a “physical 3D volumetric creature.” The transformation represents the creature losing all of her uncertainty.

Sustainably sourced, natural silk, silk organza, and wool were used to make each piece in the collection.

“I created machine embroidery which I used to translate a digital render of my muse onto the silk organza jumpsuit,” Paderina said. “I wanted the image to coil down the garment’s silhouette in an organic, cross-body motion. While the menswear coat features 3D faces of a muse of this collection which are visually interconnected with prints and embroidery of the other pieces and a collection of bags.”

Her work has been showcased at various places, including the SXSW “Design and Function” exhibition and The Costume Institute‘s “Manus x Machina: Fashion in an Age of Technology” exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Paderina’s recent collaborative wearables project was presented at the Reshape Wearable Technology competition in Barcelona. Later this month, her Intimate Decipherment collection will be on display at both the 3D Print Expo in Moscow and Barcelona’s upcoming In(3D)ustry conference.

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[Images courtesy of Snezhana Paderina]